Multiple DSPs on-a-Chip.

Researchers at Lucent Technologies (Mountain Ave., Murray Hill, NJ; Tel: 908/582-7474) have developed a new approach to building the signal processing "engines" that will be needed in future performance-hungry communications networks. The Bell Labs approach, which is called Daytona, allows multiple digital signal processors (DSPs) to be integrated on a single silicon chip to provide up to 16 times faster processing than conventional DSP chips.

A Daytona-based DSP could be used in networks to speed up Internet access and other applications, such as providing multimedia web surfing over wireless connections.

In recent years, the performance of DSPs - invented at Bell Labs in 1979 - has increased significantly. But demand on DSP performance has increased even faster. "In next-generation broadband wired and wireless communications systems, significantly faster processing speeds will be needed for real-time audio, video, and data transmission," says Bryan Ackland, who heads the DSP and VLSI systems research department at Bell Labs. "The Daytona architecture tackles this challenge by efficiently connecting many DSPs to work together on a single silicon chip."

Others have previously attempted to integrate multiple DSPs on a single chip, but these designs were not successful for several reasons. It was always necessary, for instance, to redesign individual DSP components for each new communications application. But with the Daytona approach, the researchers have developed a "toolbox" of components that can be strung together to make different multi-DSP chips.

This building block approach also overcomes the previous challenge of writing ...